Sidekick Books, publishers of Over The Line: An Introduction to Poetry Comics (“I really can’t recommend this venture highly enough” –Alan Moore) and Coin Opera 2: Fulminare’s Revenge (“Ransacks the lexicon of video game design … to dizzying effect” – Eurogamer), are inviting submissions for two new anthologies, to be published in Spring 2017: Aquanauts, which will focus on the submarine world, and Bad Kid Catullus, a book of new translations, transformations and twists on and of the poems of Catullus.

GUIDELINES:

• We will consider all kinds of poems, but we are particularly looking for calligrams, visual poems, concrete poems, and work which extends these genres: in essence, work which is immediately visually striking and typographically performative as well as readable. We are also favourably disposed toward poems that perform (and foreground) complex formal ‘feats’, such as palindromic or anagrammatical poems. 

• Multiple submissions are encouraged. We are happy to consider work that has been previously published if it’s a good fit for the remit as described above. 

• Ideally, each individual submission should fit comfortably on a single page. The page size for both titles is 124mm x 182mm. Submissions that use multiple pages to particular effect (eg. a poem in sections) will also be considered. 

• Collaborations between poets and visual artists are welcome and encouraged, but we’re looking for words deployed artistically, or with visual elements, rather than illustrated poems. 

• Submissions do not need to be typed or made using a word processor. We will consider pieces where the lettering is hand-drawn or painted, and we encourage experimentation with type using photo-editing software. 

• We are planning to include a number of colour pages in each book, so submissions that use colour will definitely be considered. 

• Please submit in the form of docs, docxs, pdfs, jpgs or pngs. If submitting jpgs or pngs please make sure the resolution is at least 300 dpi. If submitting docs or docxs, please make sure that all spacing is achieved using the space bar, rather than tabulation (this is so that we can easily transfer the work to another program without having to reconstruct it).